All medical workers might soon be required to have Covid certificates, or agree to be tested on a weekly basis, Health Minister Vili Beros said on Friday.

“The epidemiological situation is such that we must introduce Covid certificates in the health care system,” he said at the weekly press briefing of the national Covid-19 task force.

“Patients and sick people will not have to have Covid certificates because we don’t want to restrict access to health care… But we wish to reduce the chance for infection in health institutions. We must ensure health care for everyone, and only half of the adult population have been vaccinated so far,” Beros said.

Mandatory certificates “are being considered for other sectors too, notably social care, but the decision will be made by experts,” he added. “Medical workers without a certificate will have to be tested once a week, at first free of charge, and later at their expense,” Beros told reporters.

Beros said that as of next week official reporting on Covid in Croatia “would focus on the percentage of vaccinated and non-vaccinated patients in hospital care,” state agency Hina reported. He said that Croatia’s new status on ECDC’s latest map as entirely in the red was “totally unnecessarily.”

“The way out is in increasing the number of people vaccinated,” Beros said.

Croatian’s coronavirus czar, Krunoslav Capak, said that numbers of new cases have been increasing “considerably” week-on-week since late August. He added that by area, the incidence is currently lowest in Istria County, and highest in Split-Dalmatia County.

Capak also said that census takers who will visit all households in the country for the upcoming 2021 census later this month will not need to have Covid certificates, but that they would have to comply “with Covid rules.”